emp bombs

[the 1 eyed fool]

what would be cool if u could make emps bombs like the end of
escape fomr l.a. but in stead u only bomb 1 play and it take out all tecnology they have but it would beway to unbalenced but it would be cool to shut off ALL THIER TANKS

[Inverse Icarus]

YEA. AND LETS NOT FORGET THE DOOMSDAY MINOR WONDERS.

close it down mark.

[Lord Magnus]

Stop watching so many sci-fi movies. And besides your little foo technology can probably be blocked by carbon nanotubes or some other EM conducting material. Oh no now we can never stop the robotic hordes that will one day kill off humanity, oh well I guess we asked for it anyways.

[Laszlo]

EMPs actually pose a pretty significant threat to a country's national security, and would be a formidible weapon in a technologically advanced world. The nanosecond-long burst would short out all sensitive electronic devices, and if repeated, all electronics eventually fail.

This would mean no communication, no power grid, no radar, nuclear meltdowns, and crashed planes and cars (b/c of the embeded chips used so widely). It would not destroy everything, nor knock them back to the stone age, but would cause trillions of dollars of damage and take a ton of time to repair and recover from. In short, it could effectively bring an entire civilization to its knees, disabling it enough for a total takeover.

Near ground level nuclear explosions make very strong but short-ranged magnetic fields. But at high altitudes (20 miles+), the gamma rays have enough area of relatively thin air to reach spreads of 1000 miles or more (depending on detonation strength and alt.) before reacting with the EM field.

Some very expensive shielding has been devised to harden military equipment against EMPs, but the civilian devices and networks that actually run a civilization are totally vulnerable to this type of attack. Much more research is needed to find a cost effective shielding.

Very scary stuff.

[the 1 eyed fool]

atleast some one agree's with me emp would be very good even as a last dicth effort to bomb ur city area if its bein attaked by tanks

[Urban Ranger]

What EM field?

An EMP (electromagnetic pulse) is just a very short burst of intense EM radiation, particularly around the millimeter range IIRC. Anything that shields EM (e.g. faraday cages) works against EMP.

A nuclear bomb generates EMP but it has to be very big or very near for it to be effective (since energy density is inversely proportional to the square of distance).

[Lord Magnus]

Since there's life in this thread I mays well put in my 2 cents...
There could be a EMP generation tech to research and the unit it allows could be a one-use cruise-missile device. To balance this have it so that it is sigificantly expensive to construct an EMP device and it can only be used against units to disable (but not destory) them. And as a final balance have a EMP shield tech which allows shield upgrades at a cost.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
An EMP (electromagnetic pulse) is just a very short burst of intense EM radiation, particularly around the millimeter range IIRC. Anything that shields EM (e.g. faraday cages) works against EMP

With a sufficiently strong EMP, your Faraday cage can overload; it won't act like a perfect conductor, and thus won't protect perfectly. You can shield, but it's expensive, and not guaranteed to work if your enemy just uses a bigger bomb.

[Dauphin]

You may as well add solar and geomagnetic storms to this debate, as they have more damage in recent times (especially to satellite navigation/surveillance/communications) than any man made EMP device.

[Lord Magnus]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
You can shield, but it's expensive, and not guaranteed to work if your enemy just uses a bigger bomb.

I can shoot thru any tank armor as long as I have a bigger gun, but sometimes having a bigger gun is difficult to make or use just like a bigger/more energetic EMP is more difficult to generate. There is no all-protecting armor just like there is no all-destorying weapon.

[KrazyHorse]

Different situation. Not every soldier can carry a bazooka, but it only takes a few detonations to cover a continent.

[Lord Magnus]

Originally posted by KrazyHorse
but it only takes a few detonations to cover a continent.

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
A nuclear bomb generates EMP but it has to be very big or very near for it to be effective (since energy density is inversely proportional to the square of distance).

You forgot to factor in energy, sure a few nuke can cover a large area but the field is so spead out that it just dusts the electronics with EMP that's why all the nuclear bomb tests that USSR and USA conducted didn't affect no electronics. It probally had more affect on biological systems than electronic.

[DarkCloud]

Actually EMP bombs, according to Popular Mechanics are possibly being manufactured right now and can return civilization back to the 1800's... no electricity.

[DarkCloud]

Actually EMP bombs, according to Popular Mechanics are possibly being manufactured right now and can return civilization back to the 1800's... no electricity. And can be built by any country with 1950's technology.

Certain militaries, including the US are leading the research into this field so they can disrupt orders of battle by disabling submarines, tanks, etc, anything using electricity.

[Lord Magnus]

Hey DarkCloud what issue of PM was the EMP bombs in? But interestingly enough when I was searching the PM site I found an article on optical computers. So by the time EMP tech is perfected, computers probally won't run on electronics anymore and the EMP will have little to no effect on computers.